this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Never understood the dumbass pspsps thing. It's annoying and I've pretty much never seen it work. What always has worked for me is to chill just a little ways away and completely ignore them. Just as non-threatening as you can make yourself if you were a piece of furniture left out on the sidewalk.
From personal experience, cats hate being made to do things and don't come when called unless they already know you and like you a lot. But they also loathe being ignored and will snoof right over shortly to the one person being completely indifferent to them.
This would be the same reason they seem to mercilessly hunt anyone with a cat allergy. Your perceived dislike of them shall not stand!
Pspsps is essential. It draws the cat's attention to you. Then you extend a hand and look at how the cat's reacting to it. You can tell with great accuracy how interested the cat is in being pet by you, just by watching that. Works great for me. And believe me, as a resident of İstanbul for more than two decades, I have considerable experience with stray cats. I have honed my stray cat petting skills by going out of my way to interact with most of the cats I see on the streets, which is of course a rather large number of cats because İstanbul.
Agreed. I live in a European country where it's very normal to let your cats outside, and I was a mail carrier for 4 years, so I got to pet so many cats 5 days a week. You do the pspsps, then crouch a bit and extend the hand. They either ignore you and move or on they're interested and come to you and bam you're petting a sweet kitty.
I prefer clicking my tongue instead of pspspsps
Tktktktk
The psssppsssp thing just gets their attention. It may not get them to come over and they may act like they’re ignoring you, but it absolutely gets them to notice you- especially if it’s quiet.
It doesn’t change how the cat is going to behave after noticing, though and it’s best to play it off as not meant for them.
Another way I’ve had good luck is in creating some kind of toy to entice them to play- anything similar to those feather toys, for example. Rather than trying to play directly, flip it around in an open space… make it twitch… trigger their predatory instincts.
It’s also regional. Most people around here click their tongues at cats. In Quebec I’ve heard people whisper “ici” at cats.
Oh, that's interesting. It never occurred to me to think the sound might vary. Does ici mean anything, or is it just a noise?
It’s means “here” in French
So, in short, cats are tsunderes?